Monthly Archives: February 2013

Czech director Milos Forman is best known for directing One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, but long before he worked on that, he worked in his native land making simple comedy movies. And today, we’re looking at The Fireman’s Ball, one of those very same comedy movies.

“Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way”

Valentine’s Day! Unlike last year, where I completely skipped over Valentine’s Day and went ahead and reviewed Inception instead (most romantic movie ever, surely), this year I went out of my way to get an appropriate review up. I turned to one of the most iconic and well-known romantic comedies of all-time, When Harry Met Sally.

Chinese New Year happened not too long ago, so I decided to pull out a Chinese movie, and the movie I pulled out was Happy Together. Appropriately, it also kind of works for Valentine’s Day, and even more appropriately, it works to celebrate the recent successful vote for gay marriage here in the UK. It’s the single most appropriate film I could review at this point in time. But is it any good?

(Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
(1964, Stanley Kubrick)

“Gentlemen! You can’t fight here! This is the War Room!”

The Cold War! Not really much of a war, it was more a case of America and Russia glaring at each other vaguely menacingly over the Pacific Ocean. But people still made movies about it, except instead of the shooty, explosive battle movies of World War 2 and the wars in the Gulf, it was mostly political intrigue. Or it was Dr Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb), a comedy about impending nuclear war.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a collaboration between James Stewart and director Frank Capra. The first Christmas review I did was of another collaboration, It’s A Wonderful Life, and it was a fantastic film. So, how well did they pull off political drama together? Well, we’ll see what Mr Smith Goes To Washington has to offer.

It’s difficult to introduce this film. Unlike many others that have made the Films You Must See list, this one doesn’t seem to have much historical context, nor is it a huge influence on the movies that followed it. It’s a bit of an anomaly, and the sole link I have for it is in A Passage To India, another movie about Britons in India, only this is a much smaller film, one that takes place almost exclusively in a convent in a remote village.